What’s a senior getting out of bed at 4:30 in the morning for?
  Yeah, yeah, besides that . . .
  Well, this senior got out of his bed yesterday morning at 4:30 to begin a 2,000-kilometre trip around Northern Ontario in less than a week. 
  No, I’m not being paid for it.  No, I’m not compelled to do it.  No.  I’m doing it for pure pleasure.
  You see, I love to write, and writing requires research, which means finding out how the rest of the world lives, or has lived in the past.
  My goal was to reach Timmins by nightfall, with multiple stops along the way at Hearst, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Cochrane, and at roadside.  Yes, from time to time I’d pass a transport or motorcyclist and then I’d pull over on the shoulder and scribble stuff in my notebook and then I’d catch up with the transport or motorcyclist and pass them again.  Yes, that’s what writers do. 
  Okay, that’s what THIS writer does.
  Okay, I did have a companion.  Her name is Garmin.  Okay, Garmin is my GPS navigational system.  Garmin is helpful in countries with wild geography.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an address in a foreign village when the natives do not publish maps and they hide the street name signs?  Even Garmin was confused most of the time.
  Between Hearst and Cochrane my cell phone went on strike, so I could not reserve a hotel room until suppertime. 
  Speaking of eating, I was too busy to eat until I reached Timmins.  I thought I deserved a beer.  Research, and writing, is sometimes an exhausting, demanding job that requires dedication, mental fortitude, and physical stamina. 
  I love a craft beer, which I can find only in cities.  Timmins is a city.  It is chock-full of traffic, and pollution of all descriptions, and crowdedness.  I found a place that serves beer fresh from the tap.  Wacky Wings . . .
 
Read the full article on E.J. Lavoie's Blog at http://bit.ly/299idIa .

"I thank you for having goodly postponed the execution of the sentences against me. I shall make use of those days, added to my life, so as to prepare better."
  These are the words of a man condemned to death, addressed to the man who condemned him to hang by the neck until dead.
  All Canadians know  ̶  or should know  ̶  the name and the history of this condemned man.  He wrote this letter to the judge while sitting in the Regina jail in the fall of 1885.  On November 16th, he was taken out and hanged in the courtyard.  His body rests in the churchyard of St. Boniface Cathedral in Winnipeg, in the province that he created.  To most Canadians today, to the vast majority of Canadians, he is a hero and martyr.
  I am writing this to discuss history, our history, Canadian history.  History, my friends, is not found in books (though they can help) or in the words of historians (though many of them do help) nor in the mouths of politicians (who are almost the only Canadians who bother to reference our history because, of course, it serves their purposes).   Guaranteed that you will not find it on Wikipedia.
  History can be found in people who witnessed historical moments, or participated in those moments, or took steps to preserve those moments.  You may talk to them if they are still able to talk (i.e., they are still alive), or you may read their words or touch the artifacts they preserved or gaze at the images they created.   This is the stuff of history.  This is the stuff that writers and historians and politicians interpret.
  You can interpret this stuff of history yourself.  You may start in a museum or archive. 
  I spent a week in Winnipeg recently finding stuff about, believe it or not, Greenstone history, and in the process, stumbled upon several moments in Canadian history . . .

Check out the full article and colour photos on E.J. Lavoie's blog at http://bit.ly/1QdZZ8R .

I do love Winnipeg.  I am winding up a week in Winnipeg.  Winnipeg has world-class shopping, entertainments, cultural experiences, museums and archives, neighbourhoods, people . . .
However.
Just on general principle, I hate cities.  I hate cities because of the traffic, the pollution, the crowdedness, and I must also mention, again, the traffic.
I just hate driving in cities.
For the first few days in Winnipeg, I took every horn honk as a personal rebuke.  Didn’t matter if the horn was honking behind me, or three cars over, or at the end of a broad parking lot.  I took it as a personal rebuke to my driving skills . . . of which I still have a few.  But they do seem to deteriorate in cities.
Even walking in cities can be discombobulating.  In the downtown, when I’m waiting to cross a busy street, suddenly a chipmunk starts chirping over my shoulder.  I glance wildly about.  No wildlife whatsoever.  When I bring my attention back to the traffic light, which is now signalling me to cross, all my pedestrian companions are halfway across.  I stumble awkwardly behind them.
Parking is usually an ordeal.  Cities are not designed for car parking.  Or is it the other way around?  To begin, signs are confusing, apparently on purpose. Try reading a postage-stamp-sized one at 50 klicks an hour (which is, apparently, the minimum speed, if you wish to appease the horn-honkers).  You can, apparently, park on certain designated streets at certain designated times on certain designated days if you can, apparently, find an open space.  That’s after, apparently, you have managed to read the sign in part or in whole and not, in your haste, in error.
Yes, even when you find a genuine parking lot that will, apparently, host dozens and sometimes hundreds of cars, the ordeal may not be over.  Yesterday, at The Forks, I spent 30 minutes . . .

Read E.J. Lavoie's complete post at http://bit.ly/262Osgs .
P.S. The author did not have an opportunity to revisit the Gate on this trip.  But, through heavy traffic, he caught a glimpse of it, and can verify that this monument retains its splendid isolation.

We were ready to leave Winnipeg a week ago, but I said no.  I said we must see The Forks.  It is one of the city's magical places.  And silently I said to myself, "I will finally see the Gate."
So we did the touristy thing, navigated around the Market , that hive of activity where the multifarious sights and smells buzz hither and thither.  I finally escorted Olga to the car, ensured she had a good book to read, and said, "I'm going to find that Gate."
The Gate is the last remnant of Upper Fort Garry, which attained its heyday when Louis Riel occupied it in 1869 and shook the new Confederation of Canada to its very soles.  I have been visiting Winnipeg for decades, always telling myself that I will now see the Gate, and I often visited The Forks, where I believed that Gate stood, but failed to see it. 
The Forks today is the heart of Winnipeg, at the fork of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.  It has always been the heart of Manitoba, even before there was a Manitoba.  Stone age people camped there, and Aboriginals gathered there after the continental glacier retreated, and fur traders found it, settlers settled it, and merchants built a city around it.  In the nineteenth century, the Hudson's Bay Company built a depot there, from which it ruled the North West Territories, before there was a Canada.  They called it Fort Garry, and later, Upper Fort Garry.
What Plymouth Rock is to the Americans, Upper Fort Garry Gate is  ̶  or should be  ̶  to us Canadians.
If Fort Garry had never existed, the Canada we know would have never happened.
Now I set out to find the Gate . . .

Read E.J. Lavoie's complete article (4 chapters) at http://bit.ly/27W72ZB .    This is timely because the author is in Winnipeg this week.  He will revisit the site and report back.

We have two cats  ̶  rescue cats. Our family found Bush Cat in the bush many years ago, starving to death. Bushy is neither equipped nor inclined to hunt his own meals.

Lately, he has indulged an inclination to take short walks in the yard, but he rarely stays outside long. If a mouse or a vole scurries past him, he observes it with great interest.

Several years ago, some animal abuser dropped off an orange tabby on our road (which is in the bush). It was a scary, ferocious creature which never approached us and fended for itself, winter and summer.

Then for a while we lost sight of this cat, which had gone truly feral. In the last year or two, another orange tabby has appeared. It is equally skittish. Olga thinks it is the same cat. I don't.

Today, for the first time, this orange cat boldly paraded past our patio door . . .
 
Read E.J. Lavoie's complete post at http://bit.ly/1TG1Zmj .